Raven of the Waves (13 page)

Ulf knelt and took the new thrall's head in his hands. “So, my little wolf. You don't like us yet.”

“He should love us as old friends,” said Opir. “The boy's an idiot, it's plain to see.”

“He's afraid,” offered Lidsmod, unable to suppress a degree of sympathy for Leg Biter.

Torsten was carried back through the firelight, tied to a pole. He did not look like a human being. His face was clotted with blood and char, and his leather armor was filth. He growled, and his teeth glistened, reflecting the distant flames.

Gunnar had the bear warrior placed in
Raven
. The ship now around him, his head resting on the oak planks, Torsten soon began to snore.

“He fought well,” said Lidsmod.

“He killed well,” corrected Gunnar gently.

Men were smoke-blackened and weary. They gathered near the ships. A few horses had been found in a distant field. Berg, Egil, and Gunnar discussed what to do next. They still had surprise on their side, if they moved quickly. Two shipmates from
Crane
got into a fight, and one was knocked senseless. Other men lay half dead from guzzling the earthy ale of this village.

Gorm leaped up and down. “We must find the women! Everyone knows the women took all the gold with them!”

“They are waiting especially for you, Gorm,” said Opir. “I know they are fighting over who will be first!”

“I am tracking the women!” said Gorm.

Trygg said he would go, and a few men from
Landwaster
joined in. Gunnar waved them away wearily.

“Maybe some earth spirit will teach Gorm a lesson,” said Njord. There were many spirits of tree and wood, and some did not love human beings.

Lidsmod stayed near the thrall, as though guarding the prisoner. In truth Lidsmod wanted time to hold his sword, testing the grip, stabbing at the dark.

Leg Biter was tied to the helm platform beside Njord. Njord covered the boy with a sealskin. “You'll find us good men in our way,” said the white-haired seaman. “You've seen us at our bloodiest. You'll see us as we really are when we sail again. You'll learn to love Opir and Gunnar and Ulf. There's no better man than Ulf.”

Ulf offered the boy some charred chicken. The boy would not eat. He stared at nothing and would not respond to their voices. There was the stink of smoke in the night air. It was not the sweet smoke of kitchen wood. It was the confused, nasty smoke of destruction.

Njord chuckled at the way Lidsmod cut at the shadows with his newfound sword. “Some hall guard dropped it in his terror,” Njord suggested.

Lidsmod knew this might be true, but preferred to think that the weapon had been wielded by some brave man cut down by Torsten himself.

Eirik hummed a saga tune to himself, and Opir whispered over the day's excitement with anyone who would listen. Gunnar stalked the bank in the scant moonlight, and the sleeping men coughed and kicked as they dreamed.

Lidsmod scrambled to the bank and cut a slice of goose flesh where it roasted on a spit. He returned to
Raven
and offered the meat to the new thrall.

This time the boy took the food. He ate solemnly and without any apparent pleasure.

Lidsmod felt a little uneasy now around his shipmates: especially Torsten, black and snoring. Were these the same steady-handed neighbors who had helped his mother carry water from the stream, who had sighed at the lovely sea sagas on the frosty, endless nights?

Lidsmod chided himself, and tried to get used to the weight of a sword in his grip. Soon he would be free of the mental pictures of the dying and would lounge easily about the ship like all the other fighting men, weary as though from harvesting or butchering a pod of whales.

Ulf woke and shook himself. He stretched. He was stiff, and groaned aloud that he needed the bathhouse with its steam and hot water. He knelt beside Lidsmod. “I'm going to bathe in the river. Take care of little Leg Biter. If Gorm comes back from searching the woods in anything like a dark mood, he'll cut this prisoner's throat.”

Lidsmod gave a grunt, the way fighting men did, a syllable of affirmation. He stood with the sword in his hand, hoping that on this night, at least, he would not have to use it.

24

Aethelwulf was surprised at the power of his old bones and his aging sinews. Fear made him fleet!

But he stopped running so fast when he and Forni reached the first trees of the forest, three or four distant bow shots from the village. Forni, ahead of him, hurried back to help the abbot under the great, low branches of grandfather oaks as they stumbled their way to a hard-scrabble clearing where wood gatherers had stripped the fallen branches.

Aethelwulf leaned against a tree, breathing too hard to continue. He was amazed at more than his own foot speed. He had found himself with a sword in his hand back there in the street, and he had nearly used it. The pommel of the sword had been warm from the grip of the hall guard who had held it. Aethelwulf had nearly strode forward with God's might in his arm.

But then he had realized that yet another corpse thrashing the wet earth would help no one. The abbot had been ready to die, but not to take a life. He had prayed in his heart to the Lord of the universe, tossed aside the sword, and fled.

Aethelwulf and Forni ran as buck hares do, doubling back toward home. They crept along the forest's edge. The stink of burning dwellings stung Aethelwulf, and the savage voices of the strangers were in his ears, like the croaks of carrion crows.

Forni lifted his voice in a bird's cry, sounding exactly like a male woodcock. It was some sort of hunter's signal, Aethelwulf surmised. He himself knew little of wood-lore and would be happy when he could escape this maze of shadows, the haunt of unholy spirits. Even the wisest Frankish scholars did not love to stroll near a forest when the darkness rose from the ground.

Ahead, in the dim shadows, a woman stood aside from a tree, and Aethelwulf felt like crying out to her, “Don't let them see you.”

But he was silent as Forni scampered toward his mother and they embraced.

All the cold night Aethelwulf sat with the band of women, dispelling rumors. No, he did not believe these strangers ate men whole and uncooked, hair and heel. No, he did not believe they sailed with a devil at each oar.

Most of these were widows now, and Aethelwulf could not decline their questions. He kept back the sad and sickening details, saying to one woman after another, “He died with courage,” or “He fell proud before Heaven.” How would he ever forget the sight of the madman, butchering the villagers Aethelwulf loved?

Wiglaf sat tethered in the keel of the ship. He was shaken to his soul by what he had seen: Aelle the cheerful, quiet-voiced scribe, and the other good brothers, dead. The burning of God's house and—what made it all worse—the grins and laughter of these strangers.

Wiglaf had expected them to gash him with a flaying knife or rip him open with a sword. He had prayed to Jesus for the strength to endure this agony, and then he had prayed for the souls of the good neighbors who had died.

Wiglaf prayed and waited. He was roped like a gander in market, waiting for the snap of his neck. Except that a gander did not know what would happen to him, and Wiglaf did.

The morning light was bright off the river;
scir
, Father Aethelwulf would have called it—bright and glorious. Wiglaf knew he would never see the good father again. Wiglaf would be dead, and that would free him from these brutal men.

Wiglaf began to make other plans. He did not want to die, and he did not think the river would kill him. He had seen it nearly every day of his life. Wiglaf knew as soon as the water had him, he would swim masterfully. He was hesitating, but he was only waiting for the right moment.

Wiglaf had faith. His throat tightened. He would never forget Father Aethelwulf, and thought how he would smile at such an attempt. Perhaps the father watched, even now, from Heaven. Wiglaf would make him proud! He crouched against the oak planks of the ship. Soon, he thought, I will jump. As soon as the banks are a little closer.

Wiglaf prayed, and God sent rain.

When the rain began to fall on the ship, water seemed to rise upward from the river and downward from the sky, and in from the banks of the river. Each man hunched as he rowed in this world of wet.

The young man who had given Wiglaf the slice of meat the night before pointed to himself and said his name. Wiglaf echoed it cautiously, and then he uttered his own. He heard it repeated, at once familiar and foreign on the youthful stranger's lips.

Lidsmod gave a smile and stretched a blanket over Wiglaf, a hide of short hairs that rain could not penetrate. The young stranger spoke, and Wiglaf believed he could almost understand the words. “I will remember you,” said Wiglaf in return.

Lidsmod smiled and looked away.

Wiglaf kicked free of the hide and let the loose tether fall. He put his strong arm over the side of the ship. A hand—it must have been the grasp of Lidsmod—clutched at his foot, but he slipped downward.

River closed over him.

Wiglaf sank. To his horror, he kept plummeting, sinking into cold midnight, although above in the lost world it was still day. He sank until he stood on the bottom. He opened his eyes, and his eyes felt pressed back into his head by the weight of the water.

This was the moment Wiglaf had envisioned—he would start to swim now. Swim! He flailed at the water and began to scramble upward, his body spinning, rolling. Gray daylight shriveled and quaked above him.

He broke the surface. Gasping, Wiglaf squinted, struggling, fighting river current, head down, sideways, up again, his strong arm churning water while his weak arm merely thrashed.

The bank was a green line at the edge of everything. It was a distant green ridge he could never reach. The current dragged him in its muscular arms, pulling him away from the bank, and if it were possible—and suddenly anything was—the banks on both sides of the river fled him and vanished. The river tossed, fluttering in his eyes, and he saw the world fill with green night. There were no clouds, and the rain had stopped.

Wiglaf was underwater. He had to breathe, but he could not. He cried out. His voice was a large, silvery, lopsided bubble, a mockery of a scream, a wobbling ghost that rose above him, joined by another, another cry distorted into a shrugging hole in the darkness.

25

Father Aethelwulf had said that Wiglaf's weak, spindly arm had been given by Heaven to remind all who saw him that God gave power even to the weak. Wiglaf had always marveled that the thin, frail hand had wrinkles in its palm and whorls on its knuckles, exactly like the muscular, normal limb.

Now it was the frail arm that struck something solid and reached upward over the overlapped planks of the ship. He began to sink, and a strong grasp seized this thin arm.

A muscular arm hooked under Wiglaf's chin. A voice called at his ear, a foreign distortion of his name. Hands lifted him from the water. His ankle struck an oar, and he was thrown to the planks.

Lidsmod panted, dripping wet. He threw himself down and knotted the tether around Wiglaf's wrists.

Men laughed.

“Thank you,” Wiglaf said, when he could speak at all.

“Tak!
” panted Lidsmod, both amused and exasperated.
“Tak!
Ha!”

The white-haired man laughed too.

Lidsmod announced to his shipmates that the slave had said
thank you
.

The rowers thought this was very funny. Wiglaf knew he had proven himself weak as well as foolish. But no one struck him. No one threatened him. Water trickled from Wiglaf's tunic, and Lidsmod gave him a red striped blanket to wear as a shawl.

Later in the day the white-haired helmsman helped Lidsmod make a hobble that fit around Wiglaf's legs and a halter that fastened to the helm platform. His hands were free. Wiglaf knew that he could escape easily. These men no longer expected him to try.

The keel brushed reeds. Water plants snapped under the thin planks. Gunnar gave a command. Eirik and Trygg swung themselves from
Raven
.

The thrall shivered under the sealskin blanket. The rain had stopped, and afternoon sun was warm in the ship. If the thrall tried to escape one more time, Lidsmod thought regretfully, they would have to kill him. He would be too much trouble to keep, just as a ram who would not stop butting would be too much trouble on a ship.

The men set up a circular camp, sentries posted. Trygg gathered firewood. Opir and Torsten and several men from
Crane
stood guard.

Gorm and Eirik slipped across the trail, into the forest. It was late in the day, and they would hunt. Gorm was glad to see Eirik disappear into the woods. Gorm wanted to be alone. He was sick of the belch and fart of his companions.

Sometimes Gorm found himself enjoying the melody of the iron-dark birds or the bright whistle of the finch. He settled himself beside a stream. There was a clearing, and a dappling of late sun. Gorm tested his bowstring. He fingered an arrow and squinted at the arrowhead. Sometimes Gorm liked to sit still for hours.

Gorm would have sent an arrow or two into the escaping thrall. The drowning boy would have died quickly. He would have floated nicely on the river. What a waste of salt cod that cripple was! he thought. He promised himself that he would find a way to kill the boy when no one was watching. It would be, Gorm thought, a gift to his shipmates. Some might think him cruel, but Gorm knew it was hard-won wisdom.

A battle-scarred buck felt his way across the forest mulch and stared at Gorm. The buck could not read the white rune of a killer's grin, thought Gorm. A buck, even a veteran of many winters like this, could not guess what joy there was in the kill. “Sleep well,” breathed Gorm.

The arrow killed the buck in an instant. It fell forward, its forelegs crumpled. The buck's rear legs clawed earth, dragging the head with its grizzled muzzle. The buck fell sideways.